In opposition to adoption
of "Interim Statement and Guidance on Application of Pesticides to
Waters of the United States in Compliance with FIFRA"

September 14, 2003

INTRODUCTION
Application of pesticides, including aquatic herbicides intended to kill
unwanted aquatic vegetation and aquatic insecticides intended to kill
mosquito larvae should be regulated under the Clean Water Act in addition
to FIFRA, contrary to what the EPA "Interim Statement and Guidance
on Application of Pesticides to Waters of the United States in Compliance
with FIFRA" proposes. Likewise, aerial applications of pesticides
applied to a forest canopy where waters of the United States may be present
below the canopy or when insecticides are applied over water for control
of adult mosquitoes should be subject to the Clean Water act as well as
FIFRA. Simply being allowed to apply pesticides under FIFRA DOES NOT adequately
protect water quality.

FIFRA is a licensing
law that allows pesticides ("economic poisons") to be sold so
long as they are used in a fashion described by label requirements, with
the intent that such requirements will protect users and the environment
from unreasonable adverse effects. This narrow abstract view is totally
inadequate to protect water quality. There must be real-time evaluation
of each application (use) in or near public waters, including all the
particular variables involved (including potential multiple legal applications
by different parties), to assure the high quality of water demanded by
human health and the health of the eco-system upon which we all rely.
Applications of pesticides in or near water should be subject to NPDES
permitting requirements to assure that they will not result in changes
in the chemistry of the water or changes in non-target aquatic life. FIFRA
protects the right of manufacturers to sell their products; the Clean
Water Act protects water quality for all United States citizens and the
ecosystem that supports their life and health. Both are necessary.

The very existence
of people like me who have experienced severe health problems from applications
of pesticides considered legal under FIFRA, illustrates the inadequacy
of the the FIFRA approach to protect health and the environment, including
water quality.

FIFRA NOT DESIGNED
TO PROTECT WATER QUALITY

FIFRA by itself does
not work to protect human health and the environment, especially with
the lack of adequate resources given to EPA over the years since its inception.
"EPA cannot provide the public with assurance that the precautionary
statements on many pesticide labels are adequate to protect humans and
the environment from unreasonable adverse effects," concludes the
Executive Summary of the EPA Inspector General Audit, "Labeling of
Pesticides," Report No. E1EPF1-05-042902100613. The report goes on
to say "The Office of Pesticide Program's (OPP) process for reviewing
and accepting pesticide labels did not include verifying that toxicity
studies existed prior to accepting pesticide labels. In many cases, the
toxicity studies would not have been available even if OPP had attempted
to use them. Due to certain provisions of FIFRA, pesticides were registered
without requiring a complete set of toxicity studies The precautionary
statements on many pesticide labels may not be adequate to protect the
user and the environment. Almost half the pesticide labels evaluated had
missing or inaccurate precautionary statements "

EPA registration of
pesticides is based on a limited number of tests which do not adequately
reflect the complexity of either the human body or the eco-system. The
testing protocol was developed before science fully described the human
immune and/or hormonal system, so interruption of these and other as yet
to be discovered communication systems in the body were not considered
before pesticide products were licensed ("approved"). (The knowledge
base for these and other aspects of human health to which FIFRA is not
designed to respond is growing even today.) FIFRA also does not respond
to the new scientific world view (as expressed by the eminent geneticist
Dr. David Suzuki) "the inclusive vision of nature in which human
beings are intimately connected to all life processes on earth
we are completely dependent on the planet's life support system."
(PBS.org's introduction to its series The Sacred Balance.) EPA approval
of pesticides under FIFRA is based on a guess (that was made on the basis
of incomplete information) that use of the pesticide would not result
in "unreasonable adverse effects - guesses that were made at the
time the products were registered, often many years ago.

Under the FIFRA scheme,
the "guess" that use according to the label would not result
in unreasonable adverse effects was to be supplemented with information
on the actual effects as pesticides were in actual use. The EPA set up
a system of requiring incident reports to get this information. There
has been much criticism about the difficulties involved in obtaining incident
reports, including many instances where the manufacturers have not forwarded
to EPA the reports which they received. In any case, EPA does have a small
data base of incident reports. The EPA Audit mentioned above, "Labeling
of Pesticides" concludes the following: "OPP placed little importance
on the information in incident reports that it received. However, the
incident reports contained important information on the consequences of
pesticide use. Incident reports include information on human and animal
deaths and adverse reactions to pesticides. OPP was not analyzing the
incident reports to identify additional restrictions which may be needed
to protect users and the environment from adverse effects of pesticides."

FIFRA RELIES ON TESTS
OF ACTIVE INGREDIENTS ALONE, NOT OTHER INGREDIENTS IN THE PESTICIDE FORMULATION
AS APPLIED THAT CAN BE MORE TOXIC TO PEOPLE AND/OR THE ECOSYSTEM THAN
THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT.
Many of the ingredients of pesticide formulations are not even disclosed
because they are "trade secrets" protected under FIFRA.

FIFRA RELIES ON TESTS
OF ACTIVE INGREDIENTS ALONE WITHOUT CONSIDERATION OF POTENTIAL ADDITIVE
OR SYNERGISTIC EFFECTS WITH OTHER SUBSTANCES IN THE AQUATIC ENVIRONMENT.

FIFRA RELIES ON TESTS
OF DIRECT EFFECTS OF EACH PESTICIDE, NOT CONSIDERING RIPPLE EFFECTS TO
THE ECO-SYSTEM AND WATER QUALITY.

Ripple effects of
organophospate pesticides (often used for mosquito control) were documented
in:

Beyond the direct
toxic effects, this study showed that the application resulted in a reduction
of insect and plant killing insects and crustaceans which resulted in
an increase in phytoplankton which resulted in an algae bloom, which resulted
in wildlife and livestock illness from drinking water affected by algae
bloom.

BY REGULATING THE
PESTICIDE, NOT WATER QUALITY, FIFRA FAILS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT MULTIPLE
APPLICATIONS IN THE SAME BODY OF WATER.
In 1996 a supposedly legal aquatic herbicide application was made to Lake
McQueeney in Seguin, TX. The following letter to then Governor Bush describes
what happened:

April 22, 1998

Dear Governor Bush:

As you are aware,
there is a great deal of public opposition to the contamination of public
drinking water supplies with pesticides used to kill aquatic vegetation
in Texas lakes and rivers. Non-chemical methods are available, like the
mechanical harvester you arranged for LCRA to use on Lake Bastrop, which
can both prevent this unnecessary water contamination and enhance fish
habitat that is destroyed with the chemical approach.

When I experienced
an asthma attack during, and observed many dead and sick animals after,
the chemical treatment of Lake McQueeney in 1996, I contacted TNRCC for
help. I was given the Agency "peanut butter - stump the citizen line,"
you can get cancer from peanut butter so why worry. It will be pretty
dilute by the time you drink it anyway.

To date, TNRCC - the
State Agency mandated to protect our drinking water - has not shown any
sign of concern even though water providers and citizens feel strongly
that this is a real and pressing problem. They told a Texas Parks and
Wildlife Department and Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority sponsored Seminar
on February 28 that TNRCC has granted waivers from drinking water testing
requirements for aquatic herbicides.

There were several
other reports of illness experienced by people in the water the day the
application was made. A possible explanation that came up in research
for the court case of one badly injured citizen was that perhaps somewhere
else on the lake a homeowner may have also made a legal application, resulting
in dangerous levels of pesticide in the water. There was no testing of
water quality to find out. Since Lake McQueeney, like most Texas public
bodies of water, is part of a river system, the pesticide would have been
far downstream by the time anyone thought to test for it. Ms Richardson's
formal complaint, made to the Texas Department of Agriculture under FIFRA,
could find no proof of illegal application. This is largely because FIFRA
enforcement can only be related to label violations which could not be
proven with the information available to the citizens who observed and
experienced ill effects. However, this experience did make it evident
that the requirements for determining the volume of water present necessary
to determine the proper application rate is very loosely followed, often
using general estimates of the depth of the water, leading Ms. Richardson
and others to wonder if it is even possible to properly follow the label
directions for the application of aquatic herbicides. FIFRA cannot even
begin to protect water quality.

TEXAS AQUATIC VEGETATION
MANAGEMENT LAW
Following the Lake McQueeney and other aquatic herbicide use problems
(all legal under FIFRA as far as we could figure out), concern about the
lack of protection of drinking water supplies and the eco-system led the
Texas Legislature to pass a bill designed minimize some of these problems.
Texas now requires that no person may apply aquatic herbicide in a public
body of surface water unless the herbicide is applied in a manner consistent
with a state or local aquatic plant management plan adopted by the governing
entity. This law has helped, but has not solved the problem.

PESTICIDES FOR THE
USES STATED IN THIS DOCUMENT ARE NOT NECESSARY AND CAN AGGRAVATE THE PROBLEMS
THAT THEY ARE INTENDED TO SOLVE. THEY SHOULD NOT BE EXEMPT FROM THE PUBLIC
HEALTH AND WATER QUALITY PROTECTIONS OF CLEAN WATER ACT.
One of the basic problems with this proposed guidance is that it incorrectly
assumes that the use of aquatic herbicides and insecticides and adult
mosquito control pesticides are necessary. If the use of these substances
is necessary, one assumes, we have to absorb some risk from it.

The use of pesticides
(including herbicides) is only a band-aid approach to alleviate symptoms
of an underlying problem whose cure is the only real way to stop the symptoms.
For instance, aquatic vegetation problems occur largely because plants
are supported by nutrients in the water. Most of the excess nutrients
leading to excess aquatic plant growth are due to things people do like
fertilize (which runs off into surface water), burn fossil fuels (creating
nitrogen in the air which is deposited in surface water), and inadequate
sewage treatment. It is the job of aquatic plants in the ecosystem to
clean the water of these excess nutrients and add oxygen to the water.
Mass killing with aquatic herbicides actually makes the problem worse
by adding more nutrients to the water and depleting oxygen as the plants
decay. Better to eliminate excess nutrients at their source and mechanically
harvest and remove problem aquatic vegetation, letting the remaining vegetation
do its water cleansing job. (A complicating factor here is the introduction
of aggressive alien species like hydrilla which out-compete native vegetation.
The waters where these species abound need special attention to physically
remove them and restore less problematic native vegetation while reducing
excess nutrients. This does not require the use of herbicides.

In another example,
the use of insecticides for mosquito control is generally recognized to
be the least effective method of control. Not only that, but most mosquito
insecticides are broad spectrum agents of death that kill not only some
of the mosquito population but also their natural predators who are often
even more susceptible to the insecticides used. Mosquitoes are well known
to reproduce rapidly, while the reproduction time of their predators is
much slower, leaving mosquitoes with far fewer natural predators. The
most effective way to control mosquitoes is to eliminate standing water
(where mosquito larvae are concentrated during an essential part of their
life cycle) wherever possible, and to manage the remaining areas of standing
water by introducing and encouraging natural mosquito predators like dragon
flies, top feeding fish, frogs, bats, birds, damselflies, water strays,
backswimmers and copepods. In our community we are encouraging people
to create their own backyard water features to purposefully increase mosquito
predators in order to control mosquitoes in their neighborhoods. If people
are really serious about controlling serious mosquito problems, they would
consider introducing sterile male mosquitoes as I understand has been
successfully done in Israel.

While the spread of
West Nile Virus is feeding the irrational and uneducated demand for adult
mosquito spraying, it is well to note that the following study reports
the obvious fact that over the long term, repetitive mosquito spraying
has resulted in increased population of disease bearing mosquitoes (in
this case in New York swamps, a 15 fold increase.)

Howard JJ, Oliver.
"Impact of naled (Dibrom 14) on the mosquito vectors of eastern equine
encephalitis virus" Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association.
December 1997. 13(4):315-25.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, FIFRA licenses the sale and use of pesticides (insecticides
and herbicides) which are unnecessary and pollute our air, water, and
soil. FIFRA does not protect our public waters. We need from EPA a clear
statement that pesticides are subject to the Clean Water Act and that
the use of aquatic insecticides, herbicides, algaecides, etc. introduced
into public bodies of water is subject to NPDES permitting requirements.
There is no jurisdictional dispute because the two laws have totally different
purposes.